Zero waste might not be a reality yet in hospitality, but many hotels are taking steps to lower their carbon footprint through a mix of strategies, from the lobby to the guest room and all points in between.
The Zero Waste International Alliance defines it as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse and recovery of products, packaging and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water or air that threaten the environment or human health.”
More realistically, it’s been defined as diverting at least 90% of waste from landfills and incinerators. And that won’t happen if everyone on property isn’t aware and actively working toward it. Below, read how to make sustainability a movement in your hotel. Catch up on two critical first steps you can take on the road to zero waste, and how one big hotel is making events more sustainable.
Enlist the whole team
It’s good to have a waste champion on the team, but unless everyone from the general manager to the maintenance staff is behind the goal and the plan to achieve it, the results are likely to disappoint. During a sustainability hackathon last year, Scandic Hotels asked individual teams to brainstorm ideas for environmental and social sustainability.
“About 400 ideas were submitted. Now I have a pool of ideas that I couldn’t have sat down and written myself,” says Vanessa Butani, Scandic’s director of sustainable business. It’s also resulted in a more engaged, sustainably “woke” crew.
Each Six Senses property has a sustainability manager, charged with rotating across departments to bang the sustainability drum and support efforts. They also encourage employees to share some of the local customs for using or repurposing materials at hand.
“A lot of solutions can come from traditional knowledge,” says Jeff Smith, vice president of sustainability. “We say, ‘Go home and ask your grandma what she used to do with these materials,’ and we’ve actually learned quite a bit.”
In the Maldives, for instance, the resort employs a local method for tapping palm sugar from coconut trees; the product can replace imported sugar and its requisite packaging.
Don’t skimp on training
Getting to zero waste involves redefining waste, which means education. “When I visit hotels, I say we want to reimagine waste materials as just materials,” Six Senses’ Smith says. “What purpose can we find for those materials?”
Getting the message across can cause some cultural adjustment. A starting point for a zero-waste commitment would mean training staff to separate types of waste. “Having those four or five bins at different parts of the back of house is a way to make sure the staff is thinking about it and doing it,” Smith says.
Sometimes it means reprogramming employees who are accustomed to doing things a certain way. “When you have ingrained service standards that include offering guests a straw with their drink, you have to reverse that way of thinking,” says Brittany Price, MGM Resorts’ director of sustainable operations.